Mechanical Butterflies
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: "Not even peace can resurrect a dead planet, or the past."
1. Chapter 1

_"Not even peace can resurrect a dead planet, or the past."_

**[* * * * *]**

**Title:** Mechanical Butterflies

**Warning:** Beware the purple prose!

**Rating:** G

**Continuity:** G1

**Characters:** Starscream

**Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt):** _Funker Vogt - 'History (Timeless Decay Mix)'_

**[* * * * *]**

_Victory_ is a fictional word in civil war. It's totally made up, a brand slapped on an empty jar. It relies on the editing of actual events to delete the cost of winning. _Victory_, in order to acquire meaning, has to eliminate the dead and sterilize history. Rewrite events until strangling a fellow Cybertronian, a neighbor or friend, is retold as crushing an enemy. Declaring _Victory!_ comes not only at the price of common ground, but pretending it never existed. Winning a civil war is a fancy label trying to hide an ugly truth.

Beat each other down until no one knows whose side is which, then declare it a stalemate and be done with it. There is no side victorious when both are struggling to live. Any pretentions of winning are just poses on a cosmic stage; going through the motions for an imaginary audience in an effort to ignore reality.

Here is the reality today: Autobots and Decepticons started a war. Cybertron ended it. After four million years away, the elite of the two armies returned to planet nearly dead with lack of energy. How ridiculous was it to fight any longer? Why war to declare one faction the winner, kings of a barren hill like a few children on a vast, empty playground?

The elite took it seriously, of course, because they hadn't been aware of the audience leaving, the lights fading out, the stage dusting with cobwebs and abandonment. Megatron and Optimus Prime entered stage left, spacebridge entrance from Earth, hit their marks, turned, and did battle on Cybertron as if four million years were a brief intermission instead of real time. They continued a war on the deserted battlefield until there was a pause. A small moment between acts, the actors of their battlefield drama taking a time out between shots, and the Earth-stranded Cybertronians actually glanced around. Looked around. Looked again. Stared, optics wild and troubled at what wasn't seen.

Then, they searched.

You're a Seeker. You seek, always flying and pushing the boundaries to explore. There is eternally something more to know, to learn, and to find. You move, ever restless and never still, seeking something no one else has seen or experienced. You understand, perhaps better than he himself does, the need that overcomes Megatron when the truth of four million years in statis-lock really hits.

It prods him to see past Shockwave's loyal service to spot the total lack of Decepticons on Cybertron. There's a weak garrison, sent to Earth and back to Cybertron as reinforcements that never really help. You'd thought them incompetent initially, but now you wonder if they'd just been survivors. A couple of factories manufacture essentials, mostly recycled, at the base of Shockwave's tower. Here some drones, there a warrior or two. A few pockets of 'Autobot resistance,' as the one-eyed loyalist phrases it to the Lord Commander. You balance precariously on the sharp peak of the tower as Megatron bellows from far below, a strange note of desperation in the voice you know so well. You listen from your perch, a Seeker seeking something—anything-and wonder, _Resisting who?_

_Resisting what?_

There's little enough left to resist, and you don't know why Cybertron pretends to still be at war. There aren't enough Cybertronians left to fight a decent battle, much less a full-scale civil war. The days of battlefields that stretch as far as the optic can scan are long gone. From the heights, the glow of lights in Cybertron's starlit darkness cluster tightly against the base of the tower. The pinpricks scatter from there, spraying outward in fewer and fewer numbers until in the middle distance only feeble glints betray life on Cybertron. Perhaps those lights glow above the 'Autobot resistance.' Perhaps those lights aren't even signs of life. Perhaps it's the last gasp of Cybertron's automated systems.

Perhaps those tiny traces are broken optics reflecting starlight, glittering and dead.

The peace negotiations are quick, at least for a race that can live millions of years. The humans that accompany the Autobots seem far more impatient than the proceedings would merit, in any case. For a race that's been at war for longer than the human race has existed, just declaring a cease-fire is amazing. Coming to the agreement that neither side has anything left to fight over is the accomplishment of years. Megatron and Optimus Prime meet, the elite of their armies wary presences outside the negotiations, and you find the posturing to be tedious at best.

It is hard to be aggressive or defensive, to attack or defend on a world where there's not enough life left to fight. There is no reason to attempt victory; the planet itself has become history. There's no one left to rewrite past events _for_. There is no definite end to the war, just this dull drone of reconciliation and cooperation. Autobots and Decepticons discuss the possibility — then the technical details - of peace like anyone actually has the energy to fight anymore. There is no army to conquer other worlds, no population left to rebuild for a second Golden Age. Stalemate is the best Autobots and Decepticons can hope for, moral causes and conquest be damned in the interest of just living to see another day, another year, another moment on a planet stripped of all value but nostalgia.

You hold your own counsel inside where it will actually be heard. _Survival,_ you think, knowing your silence is watched suspiciously by every optic but unable to care. Through long experience, you know the screech of your voice is disregarded when you do speak. The shock of realizing what has happened to Cybertron has made you cast a cynical, speculative optic back on yourself. Recent history bothers you, and the further back you look, the more troubled you become. This is more important to you than the watching mechs at the peace table.

It's as if you've been playing a role. Action has replaced thought, an actor cast in at the beginning of this doomed war to mindlessly follow someone else's script. When is the last time you simply…thought?

The planet is dead. The war is dead. Everything associated with the two must now change, and you uneasily wonder if you can. Which is a sickly discovery in its own right, because you hadn't known you were leashed until you thought of moving on your own.

They talk of possibilities and details while you ponder ramifications. You think about survival, and it has very little to do with peace. You stand on the tower and looked down on a dead planet, and you don't want to die. Earth is hostile territory, even for the Autobots who carried pieces of it home with them, but Cybertron…it's not even territory anymore. It's a home that isn't home anymore, and you've become a true child of it: a life that's just going through the motions like a light automatically switching on because it registers darkness. You're an Air Commander long since tuned out by those under his command, mocked by his enemies instead of feared, playing the hollow part of Second-In-Command to the remnant of a faction.

Even what you've thought of as defiance and independent thought peels up like cheap wallpaper over rotted drywall under further scrutiny. Your takeover attempts are the human Punch and Judy; comic relief in the middle of violence, the scapegoat and pressure valve for your commander's failures and impulses.

When had this begun? When did your life become a joke? Your command was once a place of pride, your path to salvation. Taking the Air Commander position had been the method by which you transitioned from Emmirate to warrior, but that way was a dead end. You're a Seeker. You sought something new, an experience, a cause, an exploration to where you'd never been, and once you'd found all the boundaries in that role — Megatron trapped you there. There had been no way up with the tyrant standing on your neck. Realistically, no one had a way out in the middle of a war, but for you, for so long, had been routine submission, over and over. It had become unnoticeable, ingrained, until despite your mask of rebellion, there had been no way but his rule.

You wonder how long it would have continued, if not for this moment of reflection snatched in the pause.

Because it is only a pause. Megatron is not made for peace. This peace, this negotiation, is a necessary, temporary thing. As the humans phrase it: _History repeats itself._ Repetition of the same thing, war waiting impatiently to happen again, and the knowledge beats a frantic tattoo under your spark and in the back of your mind. Mechanical butterflies of panic: your history, repeated.

And you think again, _Survival._ You think it, standing on Shockwave's tower like a sentinel. You think it, standing silent at the negotiation table.

And you wait.

Your role is that of Second-In-Command, and that space is squeezing in rapidly as negotiations list regulations and stipulations. Peace is pushing you out of the way, writing your part out of the play. If you don't move, if you don't participate, you will be crushed by the falling curtain. This act is over, and everyone else is moving on without a hitch. There's a new stage for a new play, and the last play's characters are being adapted to the new set while it's built.

Problem is, the new set resembles the old one an awful lot. You recognize the plotline, too. _History repeats,_ you think somewhat numbly, somewhat fearfully, and you are silent because you're still not sure how to break the cycle.

Megatron shouts and demands answers of you, grandiose gestures and overdramatic acting made into second nature from a life spent in front of and inspiring troops. After so very long as the second half of the show, you find your role echoes empty. The replies you should give blink steadily in your mind like a visual display, cursor ready to click on the chosen remark, but there is no 'Enter' key in reality. Same characters on a different set, but they're spouting new lines with same underlying themes. Change the backdrop to peace instead of war, and Megatron's hands are still dancing you on strings. Your rank still depends on his whim. Nothing, nothing's changed.

Something deeply tired within you looks out over the dead planet and whispers, _No._ Seekers must push the limits, and this? It's all found and already discovered. You know — and hate to know — that it's happening all over again. You cannot stop it. Mechanical butterflies of cornered-animal panic flit, knife-edged thoughts cutting through scripts and memorized lines, until it suddenly occurs to you that Megatron has trained you, shaped you, into his ideal Decepticon. Where the Seeker is helpless, boxed in, the Decepticon…

The Decepticon thinks, _But._

You blankly watch your commander's grand performance, mindless entertainment for the other Decepticons while the Autobots don't even wince at their enemies' domestic squabble - and utterly miss your cue. He falters, the hand on your strings feeling the pull fail, and the Decepticon, the Seeker, whatever you are inside the your buffoon character, realizes, _I am not your puppet._

It's a small realization, but given a lever, you can move the world. Given a thought that is not scripted, not imposed, you can find a way out of Megatron's trap.

You stand quiet at the table, avoiding the looks from fellow Decepticons that try to communicate, the glares from Autobots trying to find a handhold on your thoughts. For a long, relieving moment, it's as if a giant weight lifts off of you. As if Megatron's foot on your neck has disappeared, and you can stand on your own again. When you turn to walk away, no one knows how to stop you. They're all desperately cooperative, condemning any and all who refuse to change their characters to fit into the script as its written, but you don't resist. You don't cooperate. The puppet cuts his strings and excuses himself from the proceedings, and the builders of peace hesitate in their work to watch you go.

The war is over. Taken at face value, literal reading of a peace treaty while turning a blind optic to the subtext, it comes down to the end of a war. A shifting of power that can be taken advantage of, like timing a strafing run through a collapsing building in order to lose pursuers locked on your tailfins. They, their work, all of it — it doesn't matter to you, and they are taken completely aback by your disinterest. But your life is the only one that has mattered to you in a long, long time. Long even for a long-lived race. Long enough for history to repeat itself.

Too long to not learn something in all that time.

Megatron can't beat you into compliance and retie the loose threads here and now, not without just cause. Decepticons and Autobots are cautiously mingling and someone might see. Compromise in the name of survival weakens tyranny. You make your escape while he can't pin you down. The freedom is stolen, and all the sweeter for its prolonged absence.

Optimus Prime sends his minions to reason with you, but you're gone before they reach you. He will, you've decided, never have the chance to dance you around his stage, strung up on Autobot rules and more subtle codes determined by peace and cooperation and other overly-optimistic ideals. Such things won't last. Sooner or later, one of the Decepticons will snap or gloat too openly about victories that never were. An Autobot will push too hard, remember too harshly war crimes that can never be repented. Peace is a delusion. War will begin again. Repetition will put on an old, favorite play for the universe to witness: the self-righteous forces of good against the Decepticon cause.

Old themes on new stages, but you're too selfish to become entangled again in the belief of conquest, the imperative right of Cybertron to rule the galaxy. Cybertron is dead, and the cycle will kill you, too, with its peace, in its war.

You stand on the peak of Shockwave's tower, and there is no victory. You have not won. But you are free: a puppet with loose strings, a Seeker able to seek.

_Survival,_ you think, more fully a Decepticon than ever before, and you look up, away from Cybertron.


	2. Part 2

**[* * * * *]**

**Title:** Mechanical Butterflies

**Warning:** Beware the purple prose!

**Rating:** G

**Continuity:** G1

**Characters:** Starscream

**Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt):** _"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."_

**[* * * * *]**

In your mind, Vos still stands. It's a fool's vision, but even facing the dead planet your home has become, hope in your city is the last to wither. It took seeing Cybertron himself to convince Megatron of a lost cause and a losing war. It takes landing in the ruins to see the truth of your delusion.

Your memories crumble in the face of reality, and the truth slams into your unprepared mind like a guided missile. For a brief time, the skyline reels as past and present fight in your overwhelmed thoughts. You stumble through the city searching with frenetic need for one familiar feature. Any familiar feature, the face of past allies, something that you _recognize! _

But, no. The skyscrapers are broken underfoot. There is nothing left of the soaring heights but empty sky. You stand staring at the emptiness that had been full of life, the featureless wasteland that had been your home, and you sway in place as the present seeps around the corners of your vision. Vos falls,

Is falling,

Has fallen,

Fell.

Dust swirls in your footsteps, impressions left in the rust as you walk. Flight seems like sacrilege here, where it flourished. This is a place where nothing now flies. From above, you would have been scorned. A flyer choosing to walk? Yet it is the only homage you find fitting, moving slowly on foot through the girders and wreckage that had thrust vertical into the sky. Puffs of decayed metal like solid air settle in your wake, tumbled structures that had been obstacle courses to the inhabitants of the sky. Vosian buildings had incarnated joy, physical signs of Vos' dedication to the want, to the need, to the yearning for the sky that flyers had while at rest. Going inside a construction bound to the ground was a disturbance. Flyers regarded being indoors as a wrinkle in time, a ripple between flights, and Vosian architecture heightened that feeling. Every second inside heightened anticipation for the moment of seeing open sky again.

That joy is gone. The profile of a city reaching for the sky has collapsed, and in your memories you replay a hundred buildings collapsing. You weren't here, you didn't see _this_ skyscraper go down, _this_ building judder floor-by-floor to the ground, but you can imagine. You walk, and overlaid over your vision is the city burning. This is desolation personified in a memorial to destruction, not a proud city of flyers. This is Vos today, but you cannot see the reality for memory at times. You turn corners that aren't there and pause before crossing a street that's vanished under debris. Something in you is searching for the past, still. It hovers above despair,

Listens to reality,

Waits for hope,

Mourns the loss.

Did you rule here once? You want to say, _Yes._ You want it to be simple, like calling the end of civil war a victory. If not for the memories of a thriving city still preying on your thoughts, you could accept the devastation. It would take away past and present complications and leave the vast sky to be rewritten as clean history. You were Emmirate, the Vosian ruler, and your face twists in sour anguish as you revisit the question: did you really rule here?

You want to say, _Yes._ Experience says, _No._

You were at Megatron's side after Vos. You saw his claws in other Emmirates, his manipulation of you mirrored in the subtle influence over representatives, diplomats, warriors, and civilians. Your pride made you scorn those Emmirates, holding up your voluntary alliance to Megatron like a trophy instead of a defeat. You are not apart from history; you are one pawn among many. Vos, too, fell. Your supposed rule was the same as other citystates, other worlds, other conquests that appeared on the surface to be alliances and willing surrender to the Decepticons. They were puppets pulled by Megatron's hand, and so were you. No matter how high your scores at the War Academy, no matter how skilled your flight or smooth your tongue, a disgraced scientist does not become Emmirate. Not that easily. Not without strings attached.

An observer would think you overenergized, perhaps drunk with grief, because you stagger through the city. You're unable to walk a straight line, but since smooth roads are long gone, it hardly matters. Things are rearranging in your head, a puzzle that had been assemble all wrong the first time. The real picture, once clicked solidly together from assembled facts, frightens you because you _didn't see it._

You were a placeholder, a prideful front that conveniently handled the bureaucracy while Megatron's schemes turned public opinion and private favor toward his own ends. You handled the tedious parts of trade and governing while his power infiltrated and guided and ultimately decided what you thought you knew. When the choice came, you too thought it your own idea. Seekers seek the new, the thrill of discovery, and bureaucracy is never innovative. Given a glimpse of a search, a cause that inspired you…yes, you'd grabbed for it. Of course you had. You'd fled the dull repetition of work for what you saw as escape — just as Megatron had planned. The rush of flight through dangerous new skies, Autobot-hated skies, became another prison. Only now, spinning back through the past, do you see how the skies didn't belong to you.

Megatron's skies,

Never your skies,

Not even Cybertron's skies, not anymore.

Everything you thought Vos to be died in the stranglehold of Megatron's grip, and it takes the muffled crunch of your footsteps through the ruins to realize it. He'd laid a beautifully baited trap to lure scientist to government, Emmirate to warrior, and it's being set at your feet again. You'd fled the peace negotiations, but they were tempting. From outside, however, from a more wary perspective, you can see how Megatron would stifle you again. He'd wrap you in pervasive bureaucratic nonsense until you gasp for freedom like a drowning mammal for air, until you take whatever he offers you as a gift instead of rejecting it as poison.

You were his Second in war, unable to move up or down for his presence and tight hold, but the war is over. He would make you his government pawn again, bound by rules and regulations. You would thrash inside your confinement, and the tension would rise. You can see it, now that you know to look and predict it. Perhaps you would have become his excuse for war in the future. Maybe you would have been the loud, flashing front while he worked behind the scenes, or maybe this time you would have been the dagger hurled at someone's back while he made his own distracting speech.

Maybe you're the one history points fingers at, the Vosian Emmirate the Autobots blame for the Decepticons' sudden superiority on the field of war. You led the Decepticons to conquer the air and abandoned your city in the process. Two times a traitor. Megatron would make you the traitor again, the Decepticon who abruptly breaks the tentative peace after Cybertron is rebuilt and there is nothing left to strive for but another day in the grind.

You've run from your typecast role, retreating from the negotiations, but you can feel Megatron reaching after you. The hold he's kept on you still caresses your wings, fans your Seeker ambition with promises of power. Your internal communication array crackles static and commands, the harsh snap of his voice and the underlying seduction of his words. But you brace your legs in the ashes, a hopelessly defiant stance taken against the lure. You search the city you once thought you ruled, looking for the power he promises. He'd given it to you, or so he'd promised while Vos still soared among the great, but all that lingers today is the stale smell of rust and corrosion. There is no mark left of your city, no sign of its flight - and past and present collide, entwine, and realign. You know he did not give you power. He took it away,

Has taken it away,

Always takes it away,

Will take it away again.

This is Vos. This is your city. It echoes silent along the ground, not even memory bringing the air alive. There is no advantage here to salvage, not even as a symbol. You came here to recoup, and now you fall to your knees in the wreckage of your hope. The past fills you until the present lacerates you, draining it out in a suppurating bout of insanity. Your time-doubled vision clears, cleansed but eerily washed of color. You look out over a monotone scrapheap that had been a city to your optics a moment ago.

It leaves you achingly empty and coldly aware of your situation. Nothing left to lose, no one left to cling to, not even a shred of power or glory to claim as your own. Not a single piece of pride to save you. The past and its hindsight cannot stop the present. The juggernaut of peace will seize your spark, tear apart your lingering thoughts, bury your independence and defiance and protests in bureaucracy. It will begin again, history repeating itself. Your history, once more, and your history is held in - was written by - other hands. Power? History? It isn't yours. It's Megatron's. Always, only, just…Megatron's.

And Megatron

Is coming.


	3. Part 3

**[* * * * *]**

**Title:** Mechanical Butterflies

**Warning:** Beware the purple prose!

**Rating:** G

**Continuity:** G1

**Characters:** Starscream

**Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt):** _"End of Days."_

**[* * * * *]**

In the two days since flying from the peace negotiations and coming to hide where Vos had been, you've realized some things about yourself. Many of these things rattle you, being that you thought they were the solid basis of who you thought you were.

Probably the most basic fear you now have is of lies. It's the truth that no longer hurts you.

You have been called a coward, and it's true. You are a coward not to confront Megatron. This is truth, with little attempt to hide it. You flee him because you fear him, and for all the strategic withdrawals and tactics you spout when under pressure, you are afraid because legitimate threat exists. That your enemies call you a coward holds only a touch of sting. You have admitted your cowardice to yourself, and the bluster is only a mask you don for dignity's sake in front of others.

That truth is one that can no longer hurt you. It's the fictions you fear. Truth is only a problem if there is a lie in the way. Stripping away the lie reveals painful things, and you have open wounds under the light shield of every lie you've constructed. This is coming back around to haunt you now. You walk through the ghost city Vos has become, and naked truths shine through the tattered lies.

And it _hurts._ It hurts in a way you'd thought you could no longer be hurt. Not after — well. Isn't that just another lie you've told yourself?

You are angry with Skyfire, and it is this fiction you're afraid of. Underneath that camouflage is the truth, and to study that fiction closely will reveal it. He came back from the dead, and you have been fighting his truths ever since. Because if you are not angry, then what are you?

You are not angry with him. You are afraid of him, and everything he represents. You'd contested that you were more content as a warrior, but standing beside a personal, resurrected symbol of the past, you had wondered, _Content, or trapped_?

Burgeoning questions had pinned you on that glacier, splayed you out like a mechanical butterfly helpless under his gentle questions, and you had almost been glad when he'd turned to the Autobots. You didn't have to listen to a traitor. The questions were inconsequential, said in a voice too feeble to be heard above the guns and glory. War was enough distance, enough room to turn and fight with denial what you stubbornly wouldn't listen to. You'd consciously remembered every bit of pride and gloating pleasure the Decepticons had brought you, and tried so very hard not to see the cage for the gilding.

You didn't have to face everything he'd brought to life just by living. Not back then, at least. That just made it hit all the harder when you did.

Now the war is ending, treaty wrangled in a bureaucratic fistfight, and your lies are fracturing like cheap paint over rust. For what have you been fighting if not belief? Where is the power promised you, the glory of a conquering Empire? There is nothing waiting for you at the peace table but a slow tearing of facts revealed as fiction.

You are afraid of what will be revealed as untrue, and, perhaps, more afraid of what's actually real. The fighting is coming to an end, and what does that leave you?

_Survival,_ you think, your shattered pride and piecemeal mind fraying at the edges with unbearable stress. It comes down to fight or flee. You cannot fight and win; it would be like confronting Megatron, and you are a coward. So it's surprisingly easy to decide when the time closes in, when accepted truth trembled on the verge of rejection and you feel the fear surge as if your emotions were a human adrenal system.

_Flee._


	4. Part 4

**[* * * * *]**

**Title:** Mechanical Butterflies

**Warning:** Beware the purple prose!

**Rating:** G

**Continuity:** G1

**Characters:** Starscream

**Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt):** _"Once upon a time."_

**[* * * * *]**

What the Autobots always forget about Cybertron's Golden Age is that it was _Cybertron's._ Iacon is always so celebrated in memory, touted as the pinnacle of civilization, but the rest of the planet still existed. Kaon had its industry and factories, and Vos, its own accomplishments. The Autobots simply forgot them.

What the Decepticons always forget is everything outside propaganda. Megatron's litany of victories required the covering of ugly losses. Kaon's manufacturing capabilities destroyed in the bombing raids; Iacon's glittering towers destroyed at the cost of Vos' total erasure. Better to forget and amp up the glory, ran Megatron's reasoning, than allow the rank and file to dwell on facts.

Historical pitfalls lurk outside both factions' version of the past, and attempting to remember only one part of history inevitably blinds one to what actually happened. You have blundered blindly into Cybertron's willfully-forgotten history before, and you hope to have learnt something from your mistake. At the same time, this blindness can aid you.

If the Autobots have forgotten Vos' achievement, if Megatron hopes to erase its fall, then maybe you can slip between the lines of text in their history books and disappear off their carefully edited maps. The disappeared secrets of your city were once common knowledge, nothing hidden but just forgotten in the greater scope on a devastating war. Even now, the archives are only buried, not gone.

It takes you two more days after you decision to find a way into the collapsed basement where you know the administrative archives once were. Two days of hiding in wreckage, deliberately blocking all communications, and scrambling the circuitry in your head with hard thought. There is no refuge on Cybertron, not with peace looming like a harbinger of personal damnation over your future, but you're left spent and dizzy with that realization.

What you must do is what you do not want to do, and the knowledge beats hatefully on the inside of your optics. The arrhythmic flutter throbs truth and terror and history through your thoughts, and it sends you staggering. _Mechanical butterflies,_ you think. It's a disturbingly apt vision that has been appearing to you more and more often, and your hysterical laughter echoes through the broken city.

There is something wrong with you, you know it, but what's sent you beyond help is discovering that it went wrong too long ago to fix. Once upon a time, your story became nothing but a fairy tale with an inevitably realistic ending. Pure fiction with a true, brutal moral. It shouldn't be funny, but it's either go a little mad or tear your pages out of the story. So you convulse with mirth in almost involuntary spasms of senseless amusement, and you grimly do not turn that clipped-wing black humor back in on yourself.

You once ruled this city, and you rule again for a short time, if only over its ghost. You may be a puppet, a placeholder, and a coward, but you've cut your strings, exited the stage - and cowards survive.

You pore over dust-caked records, powdered metal girders and disintegrated dead bodies sifting down on your head and neck as you bend to the task. Text files are so corrupted the data spews strings of random characters where information should be. The computers are old and without power, and your systems bleat error messages in violent protest when you try to uplink directly. The coordinates are there, frustratingly vague in your memory, but finding the exact numbers takes manual searches through lines of codes until your optics achingly settle on the correct location.

_There,_ and it's not even a real thought. It's a confirmation of what's already decided. It's the sum total of your observation of a dead planet from the top of Shockwave's tower. It's walking witness to the ghosts never laid to rest in your city.

What everyone else has forgotten is that before Vos fell, it rose. At its height the citystate, like its sister-states, sent ships out to other solar systems, other galaxies. Cybertron colonized other worlds, and at the controls of exploration ships and guiding settlers to new homes were Vosians. The colony projects withered and withdrew back to Cybertron as the Golden Age came to a close, and as Emirate, you personally ordered the deconstruction of the last of the Vosian colonies.

But a world once colonized might have infrastructure left behind, or, even after all this time, the worlds themselves might still be suitable for Cybertronian lifeforms. Just one lifeform is enough.

The journey will require engines you don't have, fuel you don't have the capacity to carry, but you are both resourceful and intelligent. The Autobots place their friends to rest with reverence. The Decepticons recycle their fellow warriors with a practical kind of respect. You loot the carcass of your city, cannibalizing dead structures and dead mechs alike, ruthlessly throwing the stripped struts of metal and wire aside when you can get no further use from them. Warriors and civilians rustle along the edges of your thoughts, and you press them forcefully out of your mind as you drift through the empty streets scavenging for more materials. You hide among their shadowed haunts when the Decepticons and Autobots come searching.

The search parties look while you stand, unnoticed and watching, and they move on as if you're already a ghost. In a way, you are. You've become one more spectre of the Vosian dead, unable to rejoin the Cybertronians still trying to live on this planet.

The final result of your work is hideous, no fancy armor or paint to conceal the ugly welds, but it's reassuringly basic. It has one function: to get you from point A to point B. Unnecessary fillips weren't added, cosmetics completely disregarded, and you find it adequate. Plain, but serviceable.

The most difficult part is just getting it off the ground.

One more Vosian launch, a last colonist venturing out into the great depths of space. It's a weird accomplishment, making history where it will be unknown by everyone and no one. There is no fanfare or well-wishers; just the cautious check for watchers before you struggle into the sky, and then up and up into the stars. You escape Cybertron's orbit with the odd sense of lifting off a page, your flight writing you out of the story and closing the book behind you. Maybe you're no longer part of a fairy tale, someone else's character acting out the same ending. Maybe you'll have a chance to survive, even live.

Or maybe it's only the feeling of being forgotten, part of a history that's never been.


End file.
